Vintage Christian

Of Bible Camp, flannel graphs, and Disney Jesus

On the last night of summer camp, I sat with my cabin mates on the rough plank benches around a campfire. As twilight deepened, we raised our voices in 90s-era praise songs, and when the counselor with the acoustic guitar sat down, we knew it was time for camper testimonies.

Ace, a boy from cabin 5, stepped to the front of the group. With a tearful voice, he confessed he shouldn’t have gotten so upset about losing that tetherball match. We accepted Ace’s apology, and he sat down. Other campers stepped forward, sharing how they’d never forget their time at camp, how they’d turned their lives around, or that they’d decided to be a missionary in Africa someday.

Martin, a skinny kid from cabin 7, walked to a spot next to the bonfire. For a moment, he stood silently before the hushed crowd. Then, taking a deep breath, Martin pointed to the fire and said, “You’d better accept Jesus into your heart. Because if you don’t, you’ll end up in a place a thousand times hotter than that.”

He dropped his hand, and returned to his seat.

We all sat in silence, pondering how hot a thousand times hotter than the campfire might be.

Most of us went ahead and asked Jesus to come into our hearts again, just to be safe.

We had no clue, really, what it meant for Jesus to live in our hearts. We couldn’t fathom the concept of next week, much less eternity. But as far as strategic life decisions go, it seemed a no-brainer.

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The personhood of Jesus can be hard to grasp, can’t it? He’s been shrink-wrapped in cliches, swathed in abstraction. Sweeping away the platitudes about Jesus requires the ferocity of an Olympic curler.

In the beginning, earnest old ladies told me stories about Jesus as I nibbled off-brand cookies and sipped small cups of Kool-Aid. He seemed a placid enough fellow; striding across the Sunday school felt board with his beard and white robe.

Those stories about Jesus took up the same real estate in my imagination as fairy tales. His relationship to the law of gravity seemed remarkably similar to Peter Pan’s. And not unlike the genie in a lamp, Jesus was a conjurer of bread and fish, of gold coins, of nets full to the breaking. On occasion, he appeared a riddler and storyteller; as teasing and obscure as the Cheshire Cat.

Jesus had a body like mine, I was told, except he could walk through walls. He could stroll along the surface of storm-tossed seas. He had holes in his hands and side people could poke their grubby fingers into.

Was Jesus prone to splinters and hangnails and stubbed toes, I wondered? What did Jesus feel when seated next to someone who chewed with his mouth open? Did Jesus laugh at farts? Did he ever feel bored as a kid? Did he ever get pebbles stuck in his sandals and have to sit down somewhere to undo his straps in order to shake them out?

Eventually, for those of us who began our relationship with Jesus as a risk management strategy, somewhere down the line he must mean something more than just some insurance policy against eternal damnation. Or, conversely, he must mean less.

For me, it’s the former. And like any relationship spanning decades, I’ve had my fair share of cringe-worthy misunderstandings about Jesus. I expect there will be plenty more cringe in my future. That’s okay, though. Any relationship worth its salt changes over time, deepening, maturing, sometimes lurching into territory previously untrodden.

My most recent article for Rabbit Room chronicles one of these lurching growth points in my faith—that moment of discovering, evangelistically speaking, that Jesus is not some blunt object to wield at whoever steps within my radius.

You can read the full article here: Hope for the Awkward Evangelist

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For those of you who know me, you know I’m really bad at self-promotion. It makes my little Enneagram 4 soul curl up in the fetal position, wither, and die. Nevertheless, I’ve gotten to do some really, really cool stuff recently, and I want to tell you about it.

Last week, I was delighted to be interviewed as a podcast guest by Jonathan Rogers, founder of The Habit. If you’re a writer, and you’re looking for a welcoming, hospitable community, look no further. Go sign up for The Habit. Do it yesterday. Here’s the podcast episode.

If you’re in the Rabbit Room community, you are aware that Housemoot and Hutchmoot are upon us. I was honored to be chosen as a session speaker for both events, and it’s been a fun challenge to distill the principles of hospitality and community-building I’ve been writing about in my monthly articles into lecture format. If you’re participating in either, let me know! I’d love to hear what resonated.